What it's like living and working in a tiny room above San Francisco's Zeitgeist

Vivek Kumar, 34, rents a 9-ft.-by-9.5-ft. unit above Zeitgeist, a popular bar on Valencia Street in San Francisco.

Vivek Kumar, 34, rents a 9-ft.-by-9.5-ft. unit above Zeitgeist, a popular bar on Valencia Street in San Francisco.

Photo: Michelle Robertson/SFGATE

Photo: Michelle Robertson/SFGATE

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Vivek Kumar, 34, rents a 9-ft.-by-9.5-ft. unit above Zeitgeist, a popular bar on Valencia Street in San Francisco.

Vivek Kumar, 34, rents a 9-ft.-by-9.5-ft. unit above Zeitgeist, a popular bar on Valencia Street in San Francisco.

Photo: Michelle Robertson/SFGATE

What it's like living and working in a tiny room above San Francisco's Zeitgeist

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Most San Franciscans go to Zeitgeist for a stiff bloody Mary and a fresh-grilled burger, best enjoyed on the popular dive bar's backyard beer garden. Vivek Kumar goes to Zeitgeist for the same reasons, but also to cook, sleep, rest and work.

Kumar, a 34-year-old native of Pittsburgh, Penn., lives in a 9-by-9.5-ft. room above the longstanding dive bar on the corner of Duboce Avenue and Valencia Street. The room is as small as 85 sq. ft. sounds. But Kumar's made the most of his space, impressively squeezing in a double bed, mini fridge, sink, desk and a small stainless steel counter for cooking. He pays far below market-rate for a standard San Francisco studio.

"It feels like winning the lottery," he says of his accommodations. "I absolutely love it."

Unbeknownst to most revelers on the bar's patio or the patrons waiting inside for a beverage, the two floors above Zeitgeist serve as single-occupancy residences. There are 18 units in the building lined along a hallway with a shared bathroom and bike storage/common area on each floor. The SRO is run by the Ambrose Residential Hotel, and owned by the same holding company as Zeitgeist, said its president Lara Burmeister.

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Kumar occupies a street-facing room, with views of the busy dining-and-shopping corridor below, where he's lived for a little over a year. Many of his neighbors work in the bar downstairs.

"The location" — and the space restrictions — "encourage you to be out and about," he said.

That's ideal for Kumar, who also works on the startup he co-founded — called Qlicket, a talent retention tool — from his tiny bedroom. The company, which Kumar says has raised about $1 million since its April 2018 launch, is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Penn., where Kumar spends about half the year.

Besides a Qlicket logo sticker on the door and a MacBook on the desk, signs of Kumar's unusual live-work arrangement are impossible to find inside his room. He's optimized the space with the ingenuity of a startup founder, installing ample shelves and hooks for storage and even some foam acoustic panels to mitigate the noise from below and beyond his window.

None of Kumar's housemates have given him a hard time for his line of work, he says. Most people keep to themselves, mind their own business.

Burmeister, the manager, met Kumar through a mutual friend. She says he's an "unusual tenant" of the space.

"The majority of our tenants are longtime San Franciscans that work in a variety of industries," she said. These include bartenders, servers, bike messengers, artists and "some of the other groups that are struggling to find housing in San Francisco." Many residents have lived in the SRO for years — some for more than a decade.

Counted among the tenants are a number of Zeitgeist employees. The ability to offer affordable housing near the workspace is an incredible benefit for the staff, Burmeister said.

In recent years, Burmeister said she's noticed the bar's workforce moving further and further out from the city center — and sometimes outside the city altogether. This creates immense challenges for a small business, like retaining staff and backfilling shifts.

"Small businesses depend on having affordable housing for employees," she stressed. "It's really important this type of housing is protected."

I discovered the housing atop Zeitgeist by way of Qlicket, oddly enough. Having long wondered what occupied the floors above 199 Valencia Street — the location of my preferred neighborhood watering hole — a quick Google search led me to Kumar's company. This was not what I expected to find above a four-decades-old punk bar.

There's something quintessentially San Francisco about a startup CEO living and working above a longtime bar. It's certainly a twist on the tech titans who founded their empires in garages. And for Kumar, the room gives him a centrally located base in the Bay Area, while minding the budgetary constraints required of nurturing a fledgling company.

"It's such a hidden gem," he says of his residence.

Of course, there are some quirks to living above one of San Francisco's premiere beer gardens. Kumar says taking out your trash is frowned upon on Saturdays (the busiest day for the bar). And if you don't like hearing punk music blasting in the garden, better put some headphones on.